Review of ‘Internal Affairs’ (1990)

One of my Dad’s casually favourite films. “Casually favourite” because he probably wouldn’t put it in his top 50, but he always seems to talk about it. I’d put the Kate Winslet-led Enigma in this category too, another movie he will always watch if it’s on TV. I remember my parents and I watching this together when I was like 16, which, having rewatched it last night, seems like it would have been an inexplicably uncomfortable experience considering Richard Gere spends a good chunk of the runtime telling men that he’s going to fuck their wives in the ass and make them cum until they pass out. Good wholesome family fun. The reason I rewatched this is because a few months ago my Dad revealed that for this whole time he’s been convinced that I hated this film when we first saw it. I’m sure that wasn’t true - I barely remember it - but I think we watched this around the same time he excitedly recorded Witness off the TV and the whole family settled down to watch it, only for all of us to hate it. He was disappointed, and still brings it up to this day. So maybe those two viewings converged into one memory. While the Witness rewatch will have to wait for another day, the Internal Affairs revisit went well.

Richard Gere trades in his good guy card to play a despicable piece of shit, a cop at the heart of multiple strands of corruption, while Andy Garcia and Laurie Metcalf, new partners at Internal Affairs, try to bring him down. This film uses Gere’s handsomeness in a way few others ever have. His character is a deranged horny maniac, using his good looks to seduce as many taken women as he can as power plays against people he’s either in business with or going up against. And if he can’t fuck them, he’ll imply that he has, and the men will believe him because he’s just that handsome. All the usual Gere charm is weaponised into a power-hungry cop who’s willing to scheme, blackmail and murder to keep himself afloat. It’s interesting that this LA-set film about deep-seated corruption within police actually came out two years prior to the footage of the Rodney King beating going public. It feels like a response to that rather than a precursor. The other semi-interesting thing is that Garcia’s character Gere are not too dissimilar. Garcia flies off the handle too quickly, especially when he thinks his wife and Gere have had an affair, and it’s implied that Gere is basically just an advanced version of him, who’s been able to harness his anger into psychological mind games that keep him powerful within the force. Garcia is more of a lose cannon, but it’s easy to see how he could become somebody like Gere if he spent enough time within a toxic institution as Gere has. It’s a pretty dark film that doesn’t really offer any solutions to stopping somebody like Gere succeeding within the policing system - IA bring their complaints of Gere to his superiors, but they don't care because he “gets shit done” or whatever - and multiple narrative strands are left open ended, implying how even if IA brings Gere down, someone else just as corrupt will step up to take his place.